


When Harry Met Gabi - Chapter Two

by freixe



Series: When Harry Met Gabi [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, The Affair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-19 01:18:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11886879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freixe/pseuds/freixe
Summary: Inspired by 'The Affair'. Now in his forties, with three teenage children and a successful if stressful career, Harry Potter's life has settled into something resembling normality. Two events are about to change this: the rise of a pureblood wizard terrorist group, and the reappearance in his life of Gabrielle Delacour.





	When Harry Met Gabi - Chapter Two

**Gabrielle**

 

 

It had been a long time since I’d been impressed by Harry Potter. Perhaps that’s not the right choice of word. He has always, undeniably, been impressive, at least in the more literal sense of the word. The Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, the teenager who defeated the Dark Lord, twice… he certainly left his mark.

But when I was younger, that’s all I saw him as: a superhero, a celebrity, a boy who gave up glory to pull me from a danger that didn’t really exist. I didn’t see him as a person with his own flaws and feelings. I didn’t really see him as a human being. Almost three decades later, it was harder to ignore that humanity. The years had left him with flecks of grey around his temples, lines etched across his forehead and around his eyes, a slight paunch that he obviously tried his best to suck in.

But watching him charge across the barn, wand raised, the Weasley-Grangers just behind him, I caught a glimpse of the one-dimensional warrior I thought I knew when I was a girl. And I found myself feeling… impressed, yes. And something more than that, too. Something I couldn’t put my finger on.

His gin and tonic sat on the bar, ice cubes melting. Those idiots from the Mather League had fled, and Harry’s middle child had led a grateful round of applause. Ginny rushed towards him, a mixture of pride and concern in her face, quickly followed by their other son and daughter. He glanced towards me once, a half-apologetic smile on his face, but in all the chaos I was soon forgotten.

‘You’re here!’

I glanced up and found myself looking at a face not unlike my own: a little older, a little prettier, with longer hair and smiling red lips. My sister kissed me on both cheeks and squeezed my hands.

‘I’m so happy you came!’ Fleur said, a slight English inflection to her French after so long away from home. ‘When did you get here? Have you spoken to Teddy and Adam yet?’

Despite the fact we lived in other countries, Fleur had spent the past two years trying to cajole me back into wizarding society. Tonight was her first small success. I’d only met Teddy once, when he was around fifteen and dating Victoire, and I barely remembered his parents. But the thought of a night alone in Fleur and Bill’s house, at the kitchen table where I’d fed Laila, on the sofa where Mounir and I had watched my nieces debut their short-lived wizard rock band… even a night of small talk was more bearable than that.

‘I only arrived a few minutes ago.’ I picked up my drink, then realised I’d finished it. I took a long sip of Harry’s instead. ‘Just in time for the Mather League’s performance.’

Fleur rolled her eyes, as if the men were two unruly teenagers acting out and not aspiring terrorists. It took a lot to shake my sister. Even now, people underestimated Fleur. They saw a girlish, willowy woman in pastel colours and saw meekness, fragility; they couldn’t imagine that she’d battled dragons and death eaters.

‘Idiots. It’s going forever to wipe all the muggles’ memories of this. Still, could have been worse. At least no one got hurt.’ She took the glass from my hand and set it down on the bar. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to see Teddy.’

We weaved through the tables, Fleur stopping every so often to compliment Luna’s headdress or ask after Hermione’s parents. I found my eyes wandering back to Harry. He was talking to Ron, his daughter still tucked under one arm in a hug. Lily must have been a teenager by now, but she was clinging onto Harry like a little girl.

Without warning, a lightning bolt of pain ripped through me. I looked away quickly and realised Fleur was now talking to the newlyweds. I barely recognised Teddy from the teenager I’d met a few years ago. Like his mother, he was a metamorphmagus: the spiky green hair had been replaced by a head of dark curls with purple tips, and his eyes were a pale violet.

‘It’s so good to see you, Gabrielle,’ he said, leaning in to kiss my cheek. ‘Sorry about the, uh, wedding crashers.’

Beside him, Adam was obviously still shaken. From certain angles, he looked a little like Mounir: the same light brown skin, the same cropped black hair, the same long nose.

‘I don’t get it. Why do they care if wizards marry muggles?’ A blonde woman in a green maxi dress tottered past, looking a bit bewildered after being fixed by a memory charm. Adam gave her a nervous smile then lowered his voice. ‘It’s not like it kills off the magic, does it?’

‘Of course not.’ Teddy rubbed his shoulder. ‘As long as our kids are biologically related to me, there’s a good chance they’ll be witches or wizards.’

‘Even if they aren’t, does it matter?’ I said. ‘People in our world act like the worst thing you can be is a muggle or a squib. As if not being able to brew a love potion means you’re less worthy of being loved; as if not knowing a cheering charm means you’re less able to make someone happy. It’s ridiculous, really, isn’t it? The idea that not being able to make your breakfast levitate or configure a mouse into a teacup makes you less of a person.’

My voice snapped on the last word. Fleur was clutching my wrist, her face stricken. Teddy and Adam blinked at me.

‘Of course it doesn't matter,’ Teddy said gently. ‘That’s not what I –’

‘I know. I know. I didn’t mean you.’ I took a deep breath and forced a laugh. To my relief, their shocked expression melted into bemused smiles. ‘Sorry. It just annoyed me, that’s all – spoiling your wedding for something so stupid.’

‘Don’t worry, it’s not spoiled.’ Adam smiled at me. ‘My poor gran got a bit of a fright, but Molly gave her some magic thing to drink and that calmed her down.’

Teddy burst out laughing. ‘"Some magic thing"? Babe, that was just whisky.’  

I stayed for another hour or so, catching up with the Weasley clan and chatting with people I barely remembered from my year at Hogwarts. Before I left, I took one last look at Harry Potter. He was dancing with his wife, his hands looped around her waist and hers around his neck, matching smiles of lazy contentment on their faces. I raised my hand in a sort-of goodbye. He didn’t look over, and he didn’t wave back.

*

 

I used to love coming to London. Now, like everywhere else in my life, it was a city of ghosts. They haunted the places we had once visited; they haunted the places I would never get to take them.

Two days after Teddy’s wedding, I found myself wandering through endless streets, imagining a future I would never have. One where Mounir, Laila and I would ride the London Eye and point out the monuments on the horizon. One where I’d take my daughter to Diagon Alley and buy her a wand and robes and books for school. One where we’d rush through the wall at King’s Cross, perhaps with a little brother or sister in tow, and wave her off from Platform 9 and ¾. (I always liked the thought of her going to Hogwarts, rather than Beauxbatons – if nothing else, it’d save her the seven years that I spent despising that ridiculous uniform.)

Amongst the would-be memories, snippets of the wedding kept coming back to me. The night had left me unsettled in a way I couldn’t quite explain. Maybe it was just being at a wedding again, around children and a young couple with their whole lives still in front of them. Or maybe it was talking to Harry Potter – someone who reminded me of when I was a child, and had no idea about the grief that lay ahead of me.

That grief was, amongst many things, boring. Most of the time I just didn’t know what to do with myself, so I walked. I’d walked every street of Paris, of New York, of Tokyo. I’d walked the Camino de Santiago and through Nepalese mountains, and now I was walking through London. It reminded me of this song Mounir used to play in the car. And like the singer, I still hadn’t found what I was looking for. I didn’t even know what that was any more.

It was almost a relief when, as I reached the South Bank, the rain started up and gave me an excuse to stop. I sat on a bench, cast a quick water-repellent spell over my head, and took out my phone. I opened Facebook and began scrolling aimlessly – a habit I’d picked up after a decade married to a muggle. It baffled me that the wizarding world still hadn’t adopted mobile phones - so much faster than an owl, and less of a hassle than sticking your head in a fireplace to have a chat across the coals.

That said, I’d made a fair few improvements. The best was that bewitching the photos on my profile page, so that they moved and talked like wizard portraits. It was better than the videos we’d taken. Those never changed, whereas in these I could see Laila try out a word I’d never heard her say in real life, or Mounir make a joke I’d never heard in all the years we were together. Sometimes, it almost felt like being with them again.

‘I told you, we need to go bigger.’

Magic is a mother tongue; even in a crowd of a hundred speakers, you can pick it out like a golden thread in a tapestry of dull greys. Amongst all the voices around me, passersby talking in dozens of different languages, this one bubbled to the surface.

Glancing up from my phone, I saw the two men who had stormed into Teddy and Adam’s wedding two nights ago: Reuben Selwyn and Matthias Carrow. I undid the spell and looked back down at my rain-spattered phone screen, praying they hadn't noticed me. They were accompanied by another man and two women, clustered on the bench opposite mine. They looked just like a group of office workers who had stepped out to have their lunch, complete with soggy sandwiches.

‘If you lot had come with us on Saturday we could have done some actual damage,’ Sewlyn was saying. ‘There’s only so much we can do, the two of us against the fifty-odd of them.’

‘What damage are we talking, though?’ one of the women asked. ‘Like… like, killing people?’

Carrow finished the last of his sandwich and wiped his mouth. ‘If needs be, yes.’

‘I dunno about that, man,’ the other man said, casting a nervous glance at the woman beside him. ‘I don’t want to end up in Azkaban over this.’

‘Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s messed up,’ the woman said. ‘But I dunno if we should kill them for it.’

‘They are killing  _us_ ,’ Carrow said, his voice low but fiery. ‘They are killing magic, killing our way of life. Don’t you remember where our name comes from? If we don’t do something, in fifty years half of the great wizarding families will end up like the Mathers – nothing but names in dusty books.’

The second woman nodded. ‘He’s right, Jacob. This needs to stop. If people have to die for it – even us – then so be it.’

An uneasy silence settled over the group. My heart had leapt into my throat. I kept scrolling through my phone, hoping desperately that I looked just like an of the other bored, phone-addicted muggles scattered across the South Bank and not the eavesdropping witch that I was. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the group get to their feet, brushing the crumbs from their trousers.

‘So,’ Selwyn said. ‘Cardiff. We’re all in agreement?’

‘Aye,’ said one of the women. The other cleared her throat and muttered a yes, while the man stuck his hands in his pockets and nodded. With that, they walked away, melting back into the throng of tourists and professionals going about their day.

It took a few minutes for my pulse to slow down. These people weren’t just barging into weddings to throw their weight around. They were serious about this. They were ready to die for it. They were ready to kill for it.

I needed to tell someone.

I needed to tell Harry Potter.

           


End file.
